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Roughly 35 people from the Chicago Day Labor Project, spearheaded by an organizing committee of day laborers, took over the offices of Trojan Day Labor Agency in Chicago in August to expose their violations of workers rights.

The Day Labor Organizing Committee, a coalition of groups including the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, identified Trojan as one of the worst agencies to work for in the area. Accountability over the practices of day labor agencies is minimal at best. Often workers have no idea about what their rights are. One of the purposes of the committee is to expose these agencies in an effort to stop abuses.

"I used to work for day labor and I got ripped off. People don't know they're being ripped off until we can make contact with them," said Phillip Shanna from the Day Labor Committee.

A common practice at Trojan is over-charging workers for transportation to their work sites. In fact, workers were asked up front to pay a $4 transportation fee, which is three and a half times the legal limit. They are also asked to sign a form prior to going on their day's assignment, written in English only, that states that neither they nor anybody they have worked with has been injured, which waives their rights to workers compensation claims. And the list of abuses goes on.

Although neither the manager nor the owner were on site during the visit, the committee was able to get Dan McAnnar, the President of Productivity Partners-the financial backers of Trojan, on the phone to begin negotiations. McAnnar pleaded ignorance on these violations but agreed to come to Chicago and meet with the committee to resolve these issues.

After a September 12 meeting the committee won important victories when Trojan dropped the transportation fee to $1.25 (state law) and agreed to community access to Trojan's dispatch room to investigate abuses and monitor practices. Since then however, McAnnar has backtracked on waiting time, discrimination, and neutrality in union organizing. He also implied that the Chicago agency isn't making enough of a profit for him to actually comply with state and federal labor laws and he would rather close the place than abide by the law. The committee is working on next steps including creating city legislation that holds day labor agencies accountable other actions on abusive agencies.